


Invisible Knife (Maybe It's Just My Type)

by neifile7



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Break Up, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/M, Greg Lestrade & Molly Hooper Friendship, Multi, POV Molly Hooper, Post-Reichenbach, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Sherlock Holmes & Molly Hooper Friendship, Unrequited Love, Winterlock Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neifile7/pseuds/neifile7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly's always had a type. Far from being a clone or substitute, Tom takes her mind off Sherlock when she needs it the most. But Sherlock is back now, and Molly's about to find out the full cost of the help she gave him and of the two years she's kept quiet about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invisible Knife (Maybe It's Just My Type)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knitmeapony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/gifts).



> This is knitmeapony's gift for the 2014 Winterlock Exchange. The prompt: "I'm a big fan of rare characters -- basically I'd like something besides Sherlock/John to be represented! Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft, Sally, even poor Anderson." I hope that Molly is also acceptable, since I think there can never be enough Molly fic, and S3 has given us so much to play with. Happy belated holidays!
> 
> Thanks to 51stCenturyFox for a lightning, last-minute Britpick and beta; any remaining errors are all my own.

 

 

1.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” she says, and the cliché leaves an ashy taste on her tongue.

Tom’s too-large eyes, always on the verge of goggling, register nothing but blankness. It’s a bad look on him, and she’s seen way too much of it since the wedding.

“I don’t understand,” he says, and oh god, that could practically be his motto, couldn’t it?  But that’s her fault, too. This entire mess is her fault.

Molly takes a slow breath and reaches for the little speech she’d prepared, for words that can fence in the truth that she can’t bear to say:   _It was never about you, not really. You were always standing in for someone, no, for some_ thing _else, and that was always unfair of me and unkind, and I’m sorry I wasted your time like that. I do love you, and we’ve had a good time but that’s not enough, it won’t be enough for either of us._

What she actually says: “I helped Sherlock fake his death.”

Tom’s eyes widen even more (how is that possible?), but he still looks lost. “Wow, that’s. I mean. That’s a lot to…I still don’t understand, though. What does it have to with me?”

Molly sighs once, and for this part, forces herself to look him in the eye. “Nothing, Tom. Nothing really. That’s more or less the point.”

 

2.

In the third year of her medical course, Molly develops a triple addiction: Haribo, Hob-Nobs, and Orlando Bloom.

There are sections of Advanced Path. that she’ll never be able to recall without that swooping, sugar-rush sensation: the swing between despair and absolute clarity, the certainty that she’d found her calling, her terror of not making the grade. Why this epiphany arrives in the shadow of the stupidest crush of her life, she’ll never know. She makes furtive visits to her locker for biscuits and Starmix and even more furtive visits to the terminal in the student lab, her browser cache wiped, shamefully, after each half-hour’s indulgence on the fan forums.

Being twenty-two instead of thirteen, with a fitful dating history under her belt, she knows that it’s not about Legolas or Will Turner but about a weakness for dark, fine-boned Brit boys with expressive eyes and a touch of Peter Pan about the edges (the curls, that’s what does it).  The knowledge that she shares this taste with approximately ninety percent of the globe’s tweeners does nothing to embarrass her out of it. It takes a brutal summer interning in the dissection suite and a few snogging sessions with her lab partner to put a dent in the pattern.

She still can’t abide certain sugary smells. The weakness for cheekbones and curls, alas, does not fade over time.

 

3.

The first time she sees him, he’s high.

High and unshaven and slouching through the door in an expensive torn shirt and slovenly jeans, all but towing Lestrade over to the draped figure on the gurney.  He sports a number of facial bruises and a spectacular case of bedhead, and his eyes jitter over every surface in the room, not quite focusing on her face.

“Have you started the post-mortem?” he demands, in a tone that plainly assumes the worst of her capabilities.  The voice, unexpectedly deep, booms round the room like a smack of wind. “Did you analyse the soil under his fingers?”

“And hello to you too, Molly Hooper,” Lestrade cuts in. “This is Sherlock. Don’t mind him, he’s had the manners kicked out of him overnight and did a little self-medicating before I found him. Sherlock, behave, or I’ll send you straight to the tank instead of A&E. Surprised you can get about with those ribs as it is.”

Lestrade wears a harassed expression that says more plainly than any words that he’d expected to do the bearleading here. He’s a bit of a newcomer to her morgue himself; recent promotion to DI, he's mentioned.  She rather likes him. Might fancy him if he didn't look...well. He's married, anyway.

Sherlock’s sigh, cutting across her thoughts, is the most long-suffering sound she’s ever heard from a human being. “Show me. Head and hands first,” he demands. “Please,” he adds, after enough of a pause to make it an insult. He reaches for her box of nitriles and pulls out a pair. (Well, thank god for small mercies; at least he knows proper protocol.)

Molly looks to Lestrade for confirmation, and only rolls down the sheet at his nod. Sherlock dons his gloves and picks up the left hand in both of his. “Tweezers,” he demands. “Or whatever you use for scraping.”

“I’ve already analysed the soil under his nails. Matches the sample from the grave,” Molly says.

“There’s still some residue under here,” Sherlock says. He plucks the tweezers from her instrument tray, and begins a delicate teasing-out of dirt from the nails. Her eyes linger on his hands: long-fingered, strong yet delicate, despite the grime around the cuticles and the split knuckles on the right.  After a moment, he emits a snorting “ha!” and turns the corpse’s left middle finger toward them.

“Puncture mark under the nail,” he says. “Clear signs of the dirt inside it. Also, please note that the other nails are half off and the skin of the knuckles is abraded.”  He turns to the cadaver’s face and opens the mouth. “Dirt in here as well, and probably in his lungs and esophagus when you get there.” He opens one eyelid. “See here? Petechial haemorrhages. He smothered, although there are no signs of any violence to the face or throat. Someone injected him with a paralytic and buried him in that grave, and he suffocated trying to claw his way out. Obvious from the photos, Lestrade.”

“Well, we’d more or less guessed that much. The puncture mark’s useful, I suppose, but it still doesn’t tell us who we’re looking for.”

“Wrong, Lestrade. It tells you everything. Surgical paralytics aren’t exactly street drugs –“

“Yeah, and you would know, wouldn’t you –“

“Oh, shut up about that already, it’s not relevant.  You saw his wife out there in the waiting room, in her high-necked blouse and her pancake makeup, both doing a poor job of hiding the old bruising on her neck and wrists. That’s her brother with her, obvious family resemblance, and with those hands, the scrub top under his cardigan, and the smell of anaesthetics, he’s clearly a surgical nurse. He’s your killer, probably injected his brother-in-law as he was half passed out from alcohol – surely you can smell it, even now – and then hauled him out to the gravesite, buried him just deep enough to make it impossible to get free, with loose enough dirt that he’d try to dig his way out as the drug wore off. He wanted him to suffer, tit for tat for the sister. Dr. Hooper here will be able to confirm on analysis, assuming she’s competent enough to screen for curare derivatives and the appropriate quaternaries.”

Molly remembers, after a moment, to close her mouth. “More likely a succinylcholine or isoquinolinium, these days, ” she says, because, well. She _is_ a forensic chemist, thank you very much, Mr. Posh Junkie. And she can spot a bloke on speedballs from ten paces.

“As long as you know how to test for it.” His eyes jitter over her again with clinical detachment, pausing only briefly on her hands and jumper. “Hmm,” he says. “I suggest you stop the flea baths if you want to avoid cat scratch fever. Try a monthly dose of Advantage instead,” and with that he wheels, sweeping through the morgue doors.

Lestrade groans. “And there’s him heading god knows where,” he says. “Sorry about that; he’s really not fit to be out in public. I’d better catch him up and chase him back to A&E. Donovan can pull in the brother-in-law for questioning. D’you think you can fast-track those results for me?”

“Do my best,” says Molly, biting back the questions. Her eyes itch, either with fatigue or the afterimage burnt on them: a nimbus of curls silhouetted against the morgue doors, and the long arms sweeping forward to push them open.

 

4.

The next time she sees him, about five months later, he’s washed and combed and inhabiting a magnificent coat and cashmere scarf, and she knows she’s in trouble when he shows her a dimpled, entirely insincere smile.

“Dr. Hooper,” he purrs in that fucking baritone.  His pale eyes, no longer jittery, focus on her with eerie precision. “May I call you Molly? I understand that you have a suspected carbon monoxide poisoning case. Could I possibly have a look? I’m working on a monograph, you see, quite important for police work actually, and of course there’s nothing like data from a fresh corpse.”

“Um,” Molly says. She’d questioned DI Lestrade as casually as she could, and gotten another groan and an unexpectedly candid answer. _Jesus, Sherlock. Yeah.  Got packed off to rehab, apparently, thank fuck for bossy older brothers I guess, although that one’s frankly terrifying. So he’s supposedly clean. Told him to keep away otherwise, don’t care if he sees things the rest of us miss, can’t have a druggie at the crime scene. Has he been bothering you? Say the word, I’ll warn him off._  “It’s a bit irregular, but I suppose there’s no harm in you just looking.”

“Thank you,” he says, with a perfunctory flash of grin, and he pulls out a pocket tool kit from inside his coat. He looks at her expectantly, and she groans inwardly and goes for the drawers.

He spends a good half hour over the corpse (poor Mrs. Linley, defective heater and defective heart; never stood a chance), and exits with a comment about Molly’s cheap shampoo that leaves her curling her toes in humiliation. It’s only when she’s putting the body away that she spots the sliced-off curl and the missing fingernail, and she curses herself. She’d been riveted, watching his fingers, watching that curly head bob around the body in a parody of intimacy, and she’d missed whatever sleight-of-hand he’d performed in plain sight.

Plainly, Sherlock Holmes bears watching. Very, very close watching.

 

5.

Something shifts, though, somewhere around the time Jim makes his quick exit from her life.

(She hadn’t known at the time just how big a disaster it really was. But Sherlock’s usually spot-on about those sort of things, and admittedly her gaydar is not the best. The one time she and Jim made it to bed — well, it wasn’t _terrible_ sex exactly but not the kind that makes you feel like you’re really connecting; the next night, raw from Sherlock’s slash-and burn assessment, she’d said _I think maybe we’re not all that well-suited,_ and Jim had looked at her with strangely dead eyes and a kind of half-smile, and that was that.

Then Sherlock had swept into her lab a week later, demanding corneas for _a very important experiment, Molly, really can’t wait,_ and brutally informed her that _your erstwhile boyfriend_ was a psychopath who had been wiring people to bombs all over London, for fun and Sherlock-baiting, and had used Molly to get a sneak peek at him. Had used John…and here Sherlock had clammed up mid-flow, uncharacteristically. Molly, not quite knowing what to do with any of that, had inquired instead where John was, and gotten a bitten-off _in Australia. Or maybe New Zealand, don’t remember which, having pedestrian sex with his dull girlfriend when he should be here, helping._  He’d then swept out with his corneas and a _do be careful who you date, Molly, really you should have a vetting service if you’re going to make such poor choices._

And the strange thing was that Molly had understood right off that, however hurtful, none of that had been about her at all; and that all under all that Sherlockery was a real distress and anger and actual _worry_. Mostly for John, but maybe a little on her account, too.)

Well, after the debacle with Jim, there’s the debacle with the Christmas party (and _what was she thinking_ , dressing herself like a gift that Sherlock would only toss aside in contempt – although, god, that was the strangest and most unexpected apology ever). Immediately after that, the business with the naked corpse he’d identified at a glance before fleeing; Kath had dragged Molly out on Boxing Day and poured emergency vodka into her while she hiccupped through her pathetic jealousy and useless fretting. At that point, Molly had decided that there were limits to the amount of dignity she could stand to lose, and gave in to the sensible inner voice (echoed by Kath’s sensible outer one) telling her that in no known universe would Sherlock ever be relationship material, and she should get on with it already.

That’s all very well. But having resolved not to let Sherlock run her life, she begins to notice, against her will almost, that something is rotten in the state of Baker Street, at least the part of it that regularly irrupts into Bart’s morgue.

John’s blog has gone mostly quiet, not many clues there, but Greg tells her in passing about a case in Dartmoor involving hallucinogenic gas and a monster dog, adding _there was something wrong with those two, something more than the drug, I mean; tension you could cut with a knife._

It remains a nebulous disquiet on her horizon until Moriarty’s arrest and the horror of his trial and release, and then – she can’t help it; she hates seeing people hurting and not being able to do enough to stop it. It’s why she’s a pathologist and not a GP; too many things one can’t fix with living patients. Look at her father.

She doesn’t say anything until she’s sure. Sherlock’s always talking to John in his head, after all; she may not like it but she’s used to it. This is something else.

It’s the whiff of her father’s deathbed stoicism that decides her; that, and the half-stifled hope that maybe she can make a difference, however small.

_What do you need?_

_You._

 

6.

By the time of Sherlock’s funeral, that glow of pride at having done something _mature_ and _constructive_ about him is already fading, and what’s left goes cold at the sight of Mrs. Hudson’s stricken tears, of the hollows and rigid grooves that seem to be all that’s keeping John’s face from crumpling.

The huddling bereaved look strange to her eyes: a motley tribe of the collaterally damaged, as if Sherlock had exploded mid-leap and left nothing but shrapnel in his wake. She’s one of them, bound by the perverse bonds of bloodshed real and false, and — it’s stupid, how little she’s thought this through — she can’t do anything but lie to them. At least until his Highness sees fit to stage a resurrection.

She’d promised. No way out of it.

It doesn’t get easier.

At least she doesn’t have to face John; since the funeral, he’s comprehensively shunned every scene and every friend connecting him to Sherlock — Bart’s and Baker Street very much included. Molly pays exactly one excruciating call on Mrs. Hudson, whose eyes drift toward the ceiling with every other sentence, when they aren’t glassily fixed on her face in vague pity.

It’s harder to avoid those she sees on the job, who alternate between checking on her and airing their leftover guilt: Mike Stamford, who brings his classes through regularly and tends to linger, his expression congealed in sympathy; or Greg, who drops by almost weekly for business or “just a chat.” His kindly, already worn face has acquired deeper lines and a few more burst veins. His ring is gone, the mark mostly faded, and he’s almost stopped rubbing the spot where it used to be.

Molly suspects it’s not his wife he’s missing most.

But the thing is, it doesn’t end with Sherlock’s circle; Molly’s own friends, both those relatively in the loop (like Kath) and those more distant, send up their own barrage of questions: _Oh my god, they must have brought him to your morgue, you poor thing, did you have to identify the body_ on the one side, and _you knew that fake detective bloke, didn’t you, it says in the papers that he worked out of Bart’s, must have been a right psychopath, did you have any idea_ on the other. Molly unplugs her answerphone for a week and deletes every mobile message sight unseen, until she scripts a few answers she feels capable of carrying off.

The one time she has the luxury of frank speech comes about a week after the funeral, when the supercilious figure of Mycroft Holmes materialises in her lab as she’s scoping a lung tissue sample.  “Miss Hooper,” he begins, and Molly stops listening the moment he gets to _compensation for your time and trouble_ , and holds up a gloved hand.

“I don’t want money. I also don’t need it to keep my mouth shut. Sherlock is my friend. I was glad to have a chance to help him.”

Mycroft’s mouth does something complicated and disdainful. “Is that what they’re calling it now,” he murmurs. “I shall never understand how Sherlock of all people manages to inspire these loyalties. Very well, I won’t offend your sensibilities.” He takes a tiny pasteboard rectangle from his waistcoat and puts it on her counter. “I understand you did quite well on your cover story, but there will doubtless be further inquiries at some point. Should you encounter any awkward questions from officialdom, please do let me know.” He turns to leave.

“Is he all right?” Molly blurts out before she can stop herself. So much for pride and calm dignity.

Mycroft turns back and gives her a long, considering gaze, traveling from her face to her hands and back, a motion so uncannily familiar that Molly shivers. “As far as I know, he is well enough,” he answers at last. “Of course, that could change at any moment, as he is engaged in rather dangerous work. Do you wish me to convey your concern?”

Molly swallows. “No. I don’t suppose it would mean anything to him, and anyway…it’s probably not something he needs.”

Is she imagining it, or did his expression just soften fractionally? “Naturally not,” he says, almost gently, and this time he does go, the door softly sighing shut behind him.

Molly sits and stares at the microscope for a good five minutes. Then she gets up abruptly and makes her way to the vending machines. Two cups of cocoa and a pack of Walkers later, she rides the sugar rush through the rest of the postmortem analyses. Luckily, the ensuing crash hits hard enough to forestall any more soul-searching, at least for the night.

 

7.

All of this means that when she meets Tom – eight months after Sherlock went off the roof – it’s nothing so much as a fucking _relief._

Kath, dear Kath, introduces them on a pub night, and takes a moment to bump her elbow while they’re freshening up in the loo together. “Well fit, isn’t he? Not to mention that he looks like every bloke you’ve ever dated for longer than a heartbeat.”

Molly has an abrupt rush of gratitude that she doesn’t mention Sherlock. Of course, Kath’d never met him, but she’d surely seen the photos everywhere and could connect the dots.  Only a superficial resemblance, really, Molly tells herself; yes, she’s got a type, and anyway their personalities couldn’t be more different.  Nobody could ever describe Sherlock as _sweet_ , and that’s the first and last word on Tom, she’s sure of it.

Tom likes her. Tom seems to think that she’s smart and pretty and dandy just the way she is. Tom never mocks her clothes or her profession or her occasional girly moments. Tom is openly affectionate to his dog and his friends, and soon enough to her as well — happy to hold hands, lavish with hugs and kisses. When they finally make it to bed, he delves into her body with enthusiasm, stamina, and — well, it always takes a while to get really proficient, doesn’t it? They both enjoy it, though. Their nights soon alternate between multiple-course marathons and prolonged, sleepy cuddling, and it’s lovely.

It makes her feel normal, after months of tension and wrongness. If they don’t talk much sometimes, that’s restful too. Tom likes gaming and pub quizzes and movies, so he doesn’t focus on her every moment they’re together, and that’s fine, better than fine. Better than wounding comments and tornado-force disruptions and attention that slides off her the moment she gives up what’s wanted. Healthier.

When he pops the question, she can’t say yes fast enough.

 

8.

“Gosh, this is nice,” Tom comments, gazing round at the yellow walls and bank of windows, the spotless tables and exquisite flowers. Molly hums, sipping her wine. As the photographer approaches, she leans up on tiptoe to kiss Tom’s cheek. “What d’ye think, Moll, should we hire it for our wedding?” he asks, petting her arm a little.

“Costs a bomb, I’m sure. Don’t know how John and Mary managed; must have had a windfall.” A Sherlock-shaped windfall, she’s fairly sure, like the Sherlock-shaped refinements she can spot in the clothes and the flower arrangements and place-cards and table settings.  

“Well, we ought to ask them about their wedding planner, anyhow,” Tom says, and Molly all but chokes on her wine.

“Uh. Think they did it all themselves, actually, with a good bit of input from…the best man. But asking him to help us would be a very bad idea.”

“Why?” Tom asks. “He’s a bit odd, but seems like an all right bloke, really,” and Molly pulls up short. Her fault, really, that Tom’s only had minimal Holmes-exposure, and now he’s about to get his first prolonged blast of it: one of the many things making her stomach bubble with anxiety today.

She takes another healthy gulp of her wine. “Ask me again at the end of the night,” she says.

 

*

By the end of the night, Molly’s in no condition to answer questions about her own wedding plans; she’s still not sure she’s survived this one.

Someone’s good management (John’s or Mary’s, surely) has seated them with the guests she thinks of as Sherlock’s special property. On the plus side, they have each other’s moral support through the train wreck of the best man’s speech, every bit the disaster that Molly had foreseen, but also...well. Defer that thought; no point in choking up again. On the minus side, she spends too much time exchanging eloquent glances with Greg and Mrs. Hudson, meaning that she fails to stop Tom from making an idiot of himself in front the entire room. _Meat dagger,_ indeed.

Tom, in fact, looks more and more bewildered as the evening wears on. “Tell me again how it is that you’re friends with these people?” he asks when the best man, groom and bride serially exit the hall in the wake of Major Sholto. Molly resists the temptation to jab his hand again, and simply waves a waiter over to pour more champagne. “Drink up,” she orders, looking around the hall. Greg hasn’t come back from his errand to the “loos,” whatever Sherlock meant by that; no one else is likely to tell her what the _fuck_ is going on here.

(She doesn’t find out until she and Tom haul a very, very drunk Greg up to his room, much later, and help him out of his tie, jacket and shoes and onto his bed. Greg, it seems, has arrested the Mayfly Man, a.k.a. the invisible man with the invisible knife, and afterwards held a solo celebration at the open bar: _Molls, you shoulda seen it, Sherlock at his best, Christ, I dunno why I put up with him most days, then he goes and pulls the fucking rabbit outta the hat. Just like that. You know what I’m sayin’? Yeah, Molls, 'course you do._ )

So Molly drinks, and dances, and shoves away the more vivid images (surely it’s unfair for the best man to outshine the bride), until Tom is snoring lightly in their bed upstairs, and she can step over to the French windows and look out over the lawn. She fancies that she can still see Sherlock slinking away, turning up his coat collar against the night air and whatever rush of emotion had finally pushed him out of the hall. Odd, that, on the heels of his pledging himself to John and Mary for the _second_ time that day, and just after she’d seen the three of them share a moment on the dance floor, their faces alight with mutual affection and….something more.

She hadn't known that Sherlock had it in him. Well, no, that’s not true; she’s known for years how he feels about John. (Christ, she’d seen his _file_ on John not a week ago, which had been nothing if not TMI.) She stopped feeling jealous about it ages ago, really. The thing is, she doesn’t think she could have done the same, not for Tom, maybe not for anyone. Unless...well. She’s done it already, sort of, for two years.

Dangerous road to go down, that.

But the bottom line is that today has reunited her with the tribe at last, all of them swept along the path of gale-force Sherlock; and poor Tom had been left behind, uncomprehending.

Lying by omission, it turns out, is the sharpest invisible knife of all.

 

9.

“Molly Hooper,” Sherlock rasps from the bed, and Molly forces herself to look into his eyes and not at his naked, bullet-drilled torso. He pushes some button and the bed raises him slowly to a half-reclined angle.

“Thought I’d find John here, actually,” she begins awkwardly, then adds, “but of course I wanted to see you, too.”

“Sent him home to sleep in his own bed,” he says, and Molly pauses, decides to ignore the innuendo in the phrasing. “Come to slap me some more for using again, then?” He presses the dispenser button, wincing and relaxing as the morphine flow resumes.

“Not this time. Bit ironic, though. Don’t suppose you got shot on purpose,” she says.

His pupils visibly constrict as the opioid takes effect.  “Hmm. No, that was..unintended,” and his voice scratches as though there’s not enough air behind it. “You’ve quite the right wallop, y’know. Left’s not so bad either. Saved my life, actually. Again.”

“Let’s not exaggerate,” Molly says, blushing in spite of herself. Good lord, was it only three mornings ago she’d been testing his piss in a towering rage?

“Not at Bart’s,” Sherlock slurs. “Mind palace. You told me to focus. So I’d fall the right way. Order of battle, blood loss, shock, pain. The slapping helped.”

“Well, thank goodness for that, “ she answers. (Mind palace?) “I’m glad the gratuitous violence got you back on your feet. Well, I guess it hasn’t exactly, not yet.” She hesitates, then blurts, “Sherlock, you must have seen who did it.”

He doesn’t answer for a long beat. “Intruder.”

“You will tell Greg, won’t you? Let him find the shooter for you?”

“Greg? —oh, you mean Lestrade. He’s goin’ to have his hands full. Can’t be worrying over a stray gun-happy...burglar.”

For a moment, the words clog in Molly’s throat, along with the tears she has not allowed herself to shed. Sherlock can’t possibly know that Greg had phoned her two nights ago, voice ragged, to tell her about the shooting, about how Sherlock had flatlined in surgery; or that she’d gone straight to Baker Street and spent the night calming Mrs. Hudson, who’d sobbed that she wasn’t ready to lose her dear boy again so soon. Sherlock doesn’t see any of the invisible threads that bind them all, any more than he sees the invisible wounds he leaves in his gale-force, explosive wake. He has no way of knowing that his own flawed brand of lunatic love has come back to him in full measure; not just from John, but from their entire motley tribe.

She shoves away from the wall. “Got to get to Bart’s. Should I be saving you...a few livers, or something? As a get-well incentive?”

“Might be awhile,” he says, yawning. “Kind of you, though.”  His eyes flutter closed, and she waits a moment before turning to leave. She’s almost reached the door when he adds, “Molly.” She turns back.

“Lestrade,” he says without opening his eyes. “Failed marriage. Drinks too much. Tends to overlook the obvious, at crime scenes and other places.” His enunciation, suspiciously, has firmed up a bit. “Nonetheless, you could do worse. Not a sociopath.”

“Not a sociopath,” Molly echoes. “Not really my type either.”

“Shame, that,” and Sherlock opens his eyes again. There’s a faint spark in the tiny pupil. “You have so much in common, otherwise. And he’s fond of you, you know.”

Of all the bizarre things Sherlock has said and done since his return, this must be one of the strangest. Molly’s brow wrinkles.

“Are you all right? I mean, of course you’re not, look at you. Sherlock. Why, um, why are you trying to fix my love life? Or is it Greg’s?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer until he’s lowered the bed back to a sleeping position. He presses the dispenser button again. “Merely trying to be useful,” he says, and the slur is back. “In case I turn out not to be...indestructible, after all.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” she says, eyes filling, and before she can think too much about it, crosses to the bed and kisses him swiftly on the cheek. He doesn’t open his eyes, but one side of his mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile.

Molly leaves, blinking swiftly until the urge for tears has passed, and manages not to stop at the vending machines.

Maybe she’ll text Greg later, propose a pint.

Maybe.

 

10.

  
(The next day, when she sees the tabloids, she’s tempted to go back and slap him again after all. But that’s another story.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
